Political Quotes

“because of our sorry history of bigotry in this Nation, for decades it has been illegal to discriminate in employment and make decisions, job decisions based on race or religion. The only exception is churches and religious organizations can discriminate with their own money, but not with Federal money. So let us be clear. If this rule passes, we will vaporize civil rights protections that have been in effect for decades. It is not going to make it easier for Federal organizations to get contracts; they still need to apply, compete, and are subject to audit. But any program that can get funded under this bill can get funded anyway; just do not discriminate in employment. And under those rules, Catholic organizations, Jewish, Lutheran, Baptist organizations get hundreds of millions of dollars today. And, Mr. Speaker, if we allow religious discrimination, we will be allowing racial discrimination, because many organizations are 100 percent African American or 100 percent white. Now, Mr. Speaker, employment discrimination is ugly. You can put lipstick on a pig, but you cannot pass it off as a beauty queen. And you cannot dress up discrimination with poll-tested semantics and euphemisms and pass it off as anything other than ugly discrimination. Let us defeat this rule and allow an amendment to maintain basic traditional civil rights protections.”